


Oregon Trail - Round Table Edition

by Kouvei



Category: Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
Genre: lots of swears and threats are made
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kouvei/pseuds/Kouvei
Summary: The knights play Oregon Trail. Will they get to Oregon? Will they die of dysentery? Will the party members strangle the wagon leader?
Kudos: 1





	Oregon Trail - Round Table Edition

**Author's Note:**

> Due to quarantine reasons, I started playing Oregon Trail 5th Edition again, which is what spawned this.

Mordred glanced at his phone, then back up at the computer screen. “You know this game is from like, twenty years ago, right?”

“We’re from like, a thousand years ago, now shut up,” Gawain retorted as he messed around with the starting screen to the Oregon Trail.

“Be grateful he’s not playing the first one,” Gaheris whispered.

“Okay… so what should I be…?” Gawain muttered as he was typing in his name as the wagon leader. “Doctor maybe?”

“When you tore your knee open last week, your solution was to hold a magnifying glass over it and wait to see if the sun made it better,” Agravaine deadpanned.

“And it worked!”

“Technically, it stopped bleeding,” Mordred acknowledged reluctantly.

“Oh, there’s a gunsmith option! That’ll be good! We won’t have to pack as much food if I can kill it for us on the trail,” Gawain exclaimed.

“Why are we here?” Mordred complained again, standing up to leave. “This is a single-player game.”

“Because we’re travelling down the trail together!” Gawain grabbed Mordred by the collar and yanked him back, preventing the youngest Orkney from getting away. “Look! I made, you, Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth! You’re my wagon party!”

“Is there an option for me to stay in Independence?” Mordred muttered.

“Come on! A new life in Oregon! Where’s your sense of adventure?” Gawain asked.

“I’m ready to go!” Gareth exclaimed, his eyes shining.

Gaheris leaned back in his chair. “Don’t worry, Mordred, we’ll all be dead before we get halfway.”

“All set! Let’s go shopping!” Gawain started clicking around. “Okay, we’ll take the six-month package deal… buy a bunch of salt… get a bunch of hunting supplies… oh, and we’ll need animals.”

“Oh, I thought we were going to be dragging the five-thousand-pound wagon behind us with our teeth, silly me,” Mordred drawled. Gawain ignored him and started buying oxen.

“You think nine’s enough?”

“Nine— that’s like a hundred bucks!” Gareth sputtered.

“I’m buying nine. What about a milk cow?”

Mordred glanced over at Agravaine. “We’ll all drown at the first river crossing, I know it.”

“Fine, no milk cow, I’m getting chickens though,” Gawain muttered. “And a few spare ox yokes.”

“Remember to get some medicine,” Gaheris reminded.

“Yeah, yeah,” Gawain agreed. “But none of you get seriously sick, okay?” He finished shopping and clicked to leave. “What wagon train to we want to join up with?”

“Pick the largest one,” Agravaine suggested. “If something goes wrong, there’s more people to use as meat shields.”

“And also more people to kill when you inevitably screw up horribly,” Mordred added.

“You’re all assholes,” Gawain muttered, but did choose the largest wagon train and set off from Independence.

…

“Agravaine, what were you drinking?” Gawain demanded.

“You can’t fucking taste cholera!” Agravaine retorted. “How was I— how was game-me supposed to know?”

“Just look up the best treatment in the guide book and keep going,” Gaheris suggested.

Gawain just picked a medicine and kept going, making Agravaine growl. A few seconds later, another message popped up.

“I’ve been elected wagon leader!” Gawain exclaimed.

“So the voting for this was done when drunk, right?” Agravaine asked.

“Or maybe the people who drank cholera water weren’t allowed to vote,” Gawain retorted.

“Fuck off.”

…

“How much time are you going to spend hunting?” Gareth asked.

“I like it,” Gaheris retorted.

“Of course you do,” Agravaine muttered.

“Hey, we need more food!” Gawain explained. “We lost a lot of supplies on that last hill!”

“Yeah, I noticed we didn’t have a fishing pole anymore when you couldn’t fish,” Mordred agreed. “Why did we only buy one of those again?”

“Look, I thought someone would be selling one on one of these stops, obviously I was wrong,” Gawain defended. “It’s fine, we have a lot of stuff for hunting, we’ll all be fine.”

…

They stared at the screen for thirty full seconds before anyone said anything.

“You know, I seem to remember you saying something about us being fine a while back there. Do you have any more to say on that statement?” Mordred asked, in a way-too-sweet tone that sounded like it was masking murderous intent.

“Things happen on the trail?” Gawain replied sheepishly.

“ _I’m fucking dead, Gawain!_ ”

“That’s not my fault!” Gawain cried. “I didn’t get an option or anything, read the thing! You just got bit by a snake and died, it happens! Look, I’ll even take the time to bury you, how’s that?”

“Why do you say that like it’s a big favor? Would you rather let coyotes eat my body?” Mordred demanded.

“I mean… we’re not making great progress and every second kind of counts…” Gawain muttered.

“I will tell both of our fathers that you fed my body to the wolves,” Mordred threatened.

“Fine! I said I’ll bury you! Happy?” Gawain groaned.

“I’m dead. I feel nothing.” Mordred pouted.

…

“Did you just go in a loop?” Gareth asked.

“I don’t really know where I’m going, the game’s just giving me choices of where to go and I’m trying to pick the one that sounds right,” Gawain replied.

“You know there’s a guide available in the menu? It’s right down there, next to the diary button,” Gaheris pointed out.

“I’m not reading that thing, it’s not the boss of me,” said Gawain as he clicked the first option on the screen.

…

“How do you tip the wagon over on one hill that many times?” Mordred wondered.

“You’re dead, shut up.”

“Did we lose all of our food, or only almost all?” Agravaine asked.

“Are our chickens dead from all that?” Gaheris asked.

“They were probably dead in the first month,” Mordred replied. “I honestly forgot about them five seconds after we bought them and only remembered them just now.”

“We had an entire flock, we couldn’t have lost all of them— oh, no, we did, they’re all gone.” Gawain frowned and sighed. “I’ll just do some more hunting.”

“If we didn’t lose our only rifle,” Agravaine muttered to Mordred, who snorted. Shockingly, they hadn’t, but the only large animal to come across the screen was a bear.

“...I’m going to shoot it.”

“You’re going to get so mauled,” Agravaine muttered. “You’ll miss and it will maul you to death. We’re going to be burying you along with Mordred.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Gawain retorted.

“No! Don’t kill the bear!” Gaheris whined.

“It’s just a low-rendered blob on the screen that contains meat, and we need meat,” Gareth argued. “Shoot it!”

Mordred sighed. “Gaheris, look away.” He complied as Gawain shot and killed the bear in one shot. “Alright, done, now we can go back to Gawain dropping the wagon off cliffs.”

“I haven’t capsized us in the river crossings, at least! That’s got to count for something.”

…

Gawain frowned. “Eighty dollars is a lot of money…”

“That should tip you off that it might be a good idea to pay it, and we can afford it,” Mordred replied. “Just saying, maybe we’re not the experts at navigating the river, especially considering how many times we got lost on the way here.”

“You’re dead, you get no input, ghost!” Gareth proclaimed. “We can do it on our own!”

“Yeah, how bad can it be?” Gawain agreed.

“Oh, that’s just tempting fate,” Gaheris muttered.

“We’re almost in Oregon! Don’t worry,” Gawain dismissed, choosing to navigate the river on his own. A mini-game popped up and the color drained from all of their faces.

“Why is there a mini-game for this?!”

“I told you, but no, you didn’t heed the words of the dead!”

“Shut up and let me focus!”

Agravaine, Gaheris, Gareth, and Mordred all watched with rapt attention as Gawain struggled to control the square on the screen, wincing as he slammed into rocks. Eventually though…

“Oh thank fuck,” Agravaine breathed as a screen popped up about rapids. “We’re not all dead.”

“That was a lot of supplies we lost, though,” Gareth worried.

“We’re almost there, we don’t need them,” Gaheris countered.

“Continue through the rapids or portage around…” Gawain mused, looking at the choices available.

“Gawain. Gawain no,” Mordred said, noticing the look on his brother’s face.

“It can’t be that bad—”

“No, no, no, no, no.”

“Look, worst-case scenario, we lose more supplies. Best case we get there sooner,” Gawain replied, pressing the continue button. Mordred considered setting him on fire when another minigame popped up.

“We’re fucked,” Gaheris muttered.

Gawain cast him a glance as he tried to steer the raft. “I kept us afloat okay last time,” he said right before the river narrowed and was cut off by a wall of near-impassable rapids. “Shit. Fuck. Dammit. Son of a—” he muttered as the other four watched in horror as the raft kept capsizing, until a new screen popped up.

_‘Gawain drowned.’_

The younger Orkneys exploded.

“WE WERE IN OREGON’S FUCKING BACKYARD AND YOU _DROWNED_?!” Agravaine yelled.

“ _Why are we all punished for your stupidity?! Can’t we keep playing?!_ ” Gaheris complained.

“That’s just game over?!” Gareth cried.

Mordred glared at him. “I like to think my spirit is going to try to strangle yours in the afterlife.”

Gawain put up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, don’t go through rapids. We’ve learned a lesson here.”

“We were so close!” Gareth groaned.

“Someone else is the leader next time,” Mordred decided.

“So there will be a next time?” Gawain asked, brightening up.

“Well, we didn’t get to fucking Oregon, now did we?” Mordred grumbled. “But you’re not allowed to be in charge again.”

“Deal, new game?” Gawain pushed his seat away from the computer, offering the spot up for one of his brothers to take.


End file.
